The move towards Chinese market lol

Even the non-carrier variants in the US, misleadingly called "International variants" despite of being regional to the US, have locked bootloader.

Sony got a lot of shit for making their phones skinnier and 21:9 but I honestly think it was great

The screen being less wide meant typing one handed was easier, and I frequently have my apps split one on top and one below

If only their phones weren't so bloody expensive upon release. It's always the same with them. Good phones that cost way too much, they get panned in reviews for it, then 3-5 months later they drop the prices because people aren't buying at the full price... but by that point the reviews are already out there and public opinions are set! So stupid!

that probably only means that its carrier unlocked, so that you are not forced to use a specific carrier that someone decided for you.

Exactly, which makes the "you can’t buy from a carrier in the US or you’ll often get a special version that" invalid, since its locked bootloader whether or not you get it from a carrier

Reading this comment in Zek's voice was quite amusing.

What "shit", that's one of the reasons i bought it. The other being sdcard for backups. And got the Xperia 10 VI on Ebay for $250, factory-unlocked but it wasn't. No shady stuff on it either but on it goes LineageOS anyway. Well, i would like to, but google thought i meant the IV, VI has no releases yet. But Sony is working on adding it to their Source program, trying Generic System Image (GSI) for now.

Not ðat I'm aware of.

Can someone start making android with Google being optional. I don't fucking want Google on my phone

Best I can see is a Fairphone 5 with e/OS.

I would take Huawei os. Do they make them for us market?

I checked, I didn't know but if you reside in Canada or in the states they are hardware blocked so its literally impossible to hack the device and unlock the bootloader. Thats only for the snapdragon chips not for the exynos ones. So yes don't buy samsung phone anymore.

Chinese? No thanks. Nothing from any country that doesn't respect civil liberties.

I don't understand this logic.
We have been forced by "democratic" governments of ours into situation where they took away our privacy. They took away our freedoms, they took away open source options, they took away phone unlocking. What do u have against china now? I would rather give data to china because china can't screw me, unlike local assholes

Yuck, TIL.

This isn't democracy. This is oligarchy, and an increasingly fascist one. Late stage capitalism that lost its sense of checks and balances.

I would rather give data to china because china can't screw me, unlike local assholes.

Move to China and let us know how it goes for you. The world is eyeballs deep in expat Chinese peoples who were sick of their shit. You seem to need to learn the hard way.

Yuck indeed.

People tried many ways to get around it, back when I was still using an US variant Samsung Note 9, people went as far as using a leaked engineering/preproduction ROM, which can be flashed using Samsung's official tool because it does have the correct key for the locked bootloader to accept, being built and compiled by Samsung, and because it's an engineering ROM it would give you root and everything despite of the bootloader still being locked.

But it was an exceptionally rare leak, and it was only meant for preproduction for a reason, it is very VERY unstable and not exactly usable for a daily driver lol

So happy I am leaving all that BS from Samsung behind with my current Sony Xperia 1 VI which is bootloader-unlocked and rooted and deeply modded and truly my own device lol